Ryan is five weeks sober. He has battled substance abuse since he was 16. First it was alcohol.

"It was going to the liquor store; whatever I could do to get my alcohol,” he said.

Then, Ryan broke his arm, a doctor prescribed him opiates, and he got hooked.

When his supply ran out, a friend suggested another drug – heroin.

"One day he's just like, 'Aw, dude I can help you out. You got 10 bucks?'” Ryan said. “And I was like, 'Yeah, I can come up with 10 bucks.' He said, 'Here, just snort this.' I didn't even really know what it was. I did it and felt better.”

Ryan became heroin’s latest victim.

"Heroin doesn't care who you are,” Ryan said. “It's like you have no feelings. You're sad? It takes that away. Once you do heroin, you do anything and everything to get more of it.”

Getting more heroin included running the drugs for dealers, Ryan said.

"It's either I keep doing this, feel sick or die,” he said.

Die Ryan did not, but he was hurting himself. One use of a needle that dropped onto a bathroom floor ended up infecting his arm. Doctors removed part of it because the infection was so bad.

Then in August, Ryan was brought to the York County Jail.

Two people had called the sheriff’s department – Ryan’s parents.

“Every day is a challenge, but every day is still good because he's still here,” said Ryan’s mother, LeeAnn Burns Theriault.

“One of the hardest things we've ever done was have our child be incarcerated,” Ryan’s father, Glenn Theriault, said. "We knew that if he was incarcerated he'd be alive the next day, and that's why we did that -- to save him."

Ryan spent two weeks in jail, detoxing there. His body went through withdrawal.

Two weeks later, he went to live at Our Father’s House in Saco, a faith-based recovery program. He said his faith helped him achieve sobriety.

“It’s a total transition. We were waiting for this,” Glenn said.

"If they didn't, I'd still be doing it,” Ryan said. "Forty-nine percent of me might say, 'Go use drugs,' but the other 51 percent is saying don't. I'm going with the 51 percent.”

That 49 percent will always be there, Ryan said, but he is fighting back.

"I will always be in recovery, every day of my life,” he said.

His parents are there to help him along the way.

"We are kind of babysitting, and I will do that if it takes the rest of my life to babysit him to overcome this, I'll do that,” Glenn said.

Now a new challenge for the Theriaults: getting heroin and its dealers out of Maine.

“This has made me want to help the addicts and take the heroin dealers off the streets,” Glenn said.